“With the launch of its iPad mini, Apple now has a device for nearly all purposes. But the company still hasn’t offered its version of the biggest home device of all — the TV,” John Boudreau reports for SiliconValley.com.

“Apple, it is hoped, will reinvent that living-room box into a sophisticated system that allows people to effortlessly access limitless entertainment and information on one device — everything from HBO shows to Internet videos to games to email,” Boudreau reports. “Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs heightened interest further. ‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use. It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud. … It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine,’ Isaacson quotes Jobs as saying. ‘I finally cracked it.'”

Boudreau reports, “Some analysts believe Apple is preparing to release its next new thing — an ambitious iTV that becomes the center of people’s digital lives — in 2013. Others, though, believe Apple’s contributions will be greatly constrained because content providers, from studios to cable companies, are wedded to the lucrative pay-TV subscription models they have now and won’t welcome Apple’s role as an intermediary with consumers.”

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19 Comments

To be fair, analysts predicted iTV for 2010, 2011, 2012 years, and nothing happened.

Apple might want to wait until when 3840×2160 panels of big enough sizes to be available for them in big quantities for good price — they will not do iTV until they will have *both* software and hardware.

Though even with such hardware, there is no content to play in such resolutions, so the issue overall is not simple.

Apple TV does not necessarily mean a TV. It can be the box that AppleTV is now with new software that is an app that runs on any iOS device but is focused on the iPad Mini form factor. This app with the iPad Mini will provide an interface for ANY HDTV that will provide a pick and choose pay-as-you-go menu. Don’t like that or new features are available, the app gets updated and you have those features. Don’t think hardware, think software.

Some part of me doesn’t believe they will ever make a TV. Its highly possible that they will but I’m not sure that is something they would want to go after. I think they will just continue to improve the apple TV itself… as I predicted before, I said one day they will probably be able to play games on it.. and you can… though its through the device. Better game play experience would be the device actually holding the games on it. You can only go so fast with wifi syncing and even playing real racing it has some jitter to it.

Giving it a faster processor on the next update will be a pointless feature unless they give you a better gaming experience where it would use that… which the bottleneck of it is the wifi… and I’d like to know if the apple TV actually gets a full gigabit connection to the router… Just because something is gigabit, doesn’t mean the throughput is running at gigabit speeds. Its sad when I see people spend $400 on a buffalo NAS with gigabit.. and yet it only puts out 10MB/s.. where as theoretical speed is 125.. the majority of computers put out about 70MBs through gigabit.

I don’t understand people who still watch TV and waste their time. iTunes has everything, sometimes on the 15 inch Retina, sometimes over the HD beamer, sometimes on the iPad. And the news are on the web. no reason for any TV at all.

I gave up on cable, satellite, and broadcast a few years ago… By downloading exactly what I want I bypass commercials and those monthly fees… At this moment I have more available than time to watch…, biggest benefit is getting rid off CNN, Fox and network news….. By reading the news online I am up to date but avoid the BS and fluff pieces…. I am interested to see what Apple does, but I have already set up a media server that streams to all my TVs and projection room theater…. It’s here already with Mac Minis and terabytes if server space… Current lack of .avi support makes Apple TV unusable for me….

I would love to get rid of my satellite TV and just use my Apple TV and maybe Netflix. But what about live sports? I like to watch football and baseball and hockey and cycling and F1 and basketball so what is a guy to do?

We have been free of DirecTV for over a year and don’t miss it at all. We have an AppleTV with Netflix and Hulu+ and a homemade Gray-Hoverman antenna in the attic. I can pull in 18 channels over-the-air in BF Minnesota. Yes, I don’t get to see all of the games I want but I do like having an extra $90 in my wallet each month!